How two layoffs taught me to look beyond the next familiar role.
There are moments when the most familiar next step feels like the safest one. That happened to me twice: first when I was laid off at 56, and again at 59. Both times, I moved quickly toward what I already knew—healthcare operations, pharmacy automation, customer service, and the professional relationships I had built over decades.
Those choices made sense. My family needed stability, and I needed a way forward. Looking back, though, I can see how little room I gave myself to consider what else might be possible.
The first layoff
In 2016, my role was eliminated. It was the first time I had lost a job since entering the corporate workforce in 1985. After the shock passed, I focused on using the severance and transition support to find a similar executive position.
With two children nearing college, preserving income and benefits mattered. I returned to the part of the industry I knew best, relied on long-standing relationships, and soon moved into another senior operations role.
It was a responsible decision. But I did not pause long enough to ask whether this change might also be an opportunity to explore a different direction.
The second layoff
Eight months after I joined, the company was sold to a private equity firm. I understood that future consolidation could reshape the leadership team. In June 2019, the company merged with a larger organization, and my COO role was eliminated.
At 59, I faced another transition. Once again, I stayed close to familiar ground. Through my professional network, I moved into a director-level customer service operations role in an adjacent industry.
The position offered salary, benefits, and stability when my family needed them. Yet another opportunity to consider the larger direction of my life passed with little attention.
The question I left unexplored
I knew how to ask, “What role can I get next?” I was less practiced at asking, “What kind of contribution do I want to make now?”
That second question might have led me to reconsider interests I had set aside, activities I enjoyed, or ways of contributing beyond the work I already knew. I cannot know where it would have taken me. I do know that I gave it very little space.
I would still have needed to address the practical demands in front of me. But finding another role did not have to end the conversation about what I wanted from the years ahead.
Where else we choose the familiar
I see this pattern beyond career changes. When children leave home, a couple may keep organizing life around parenting. When caregiving responsibilities grow, we may take on more without considering what we can sustain. Even after retirement, we may fill the calendar before asking what we want our days to hold.
Familiar habits help us manage uncertainty. Sometimes they continue to serve us well. Sometimes we need enough room to notice that our circumstances have changed, and that we have choices we have not yet considered.
What am I continuing because it still matters to me? What am I continuing because I know how to do it? What would I like to explore?
Making room for another possibility
This is part of what draws me to The Second Formation™, which I am developing with Kevin Murphy. I would have welcomed a place to consider those questions with people who could listen, ask thoughtfully, and help me see beyond my immediate next step.
We bring together six to eight adults, welcoming both men and women, for a journey that opens with an in-person retreat and continues through guided conversations and reflection between gatherings. The Second Formation Journal provides space to explore the experiences, commitments, and possibilities that deserve attention.
Participants choose what they wish to share as trust develops. There is room for difficult questions, companionship, laughter, and the enjoyment of discovering an interest or possibility we thought we had left behind.
What emerges may be a clearer priority, a conversation we need to have, a boundary we need to set, or something small we want to try. We can begin exploring while continuing to meet the responsibilities of ordinary life.
Looking back, I respect the decisions I made for my family. I also wish I had given myself permission to keep asking what else might be possible.
If you are considering your next step, perhaps there is a question worth making room for before the familiar path becomes the only one you see.
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The Second Formation™ Space to reflect. Room to become.